Border Protectionism
I often set myself a point when I stop addressing new information on a topic. Nothing like a deadline to bring things to a focus. When that doesn't help (and it didn't here) I assume there is more flux than usual involved. So what is the problem regarding immigration and undocumented workers that has requested so much fixing. The problem is the debate. I'm all for debates but this one spawned by H.R. 4437, "Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005." seemed designed to create a traumatic big issue where a merely manageable problem existed
act now: Responsible Immigration Reform Background. First, the words we use. What do we think we are talking about here? Immigration and emigration equalling e + migration [to leave a place] against im (in) + migration [to come into a place]. Two sides of a single coin - two facets of a single individual. The pairing is not the pure dichotomy it appears to be. What is appearing in one place after departing another place is not merely an inconvenient material object to be considered abstractly, but a person. This individual who immigrates, will possesses properties of permanence, or transience, which speak to this individual, motivationally. His - her behavior will differ whether their role is as guest worker with or without possibility of citizenship. A process of converting external to internal proletariat. Implicitly questioning whether we will have stages, or types of citizenship, how that will change us
Washington Monthly GUEST WORKERS. Of course we are not talking just about individuals, but populations of people. Some other word pairings to round this out: Sympathy, empathy or antipathy. Also anthropic [of or relating to the development of man] compared with misanthropy [hating or mistrusting man]. I vaguely recall economists like Julian Simon insisting the human ingenuity was an inseparable phrase, one that evaporated all problems. Ecco homo anyone? No? Oh well. Another strong feature of this debate has been hostility. I was looking for some quotes from Rep. Tancredo (last heard from back on 06 April - toward end of this piece) or the head of the Minuteman group (the group that likes to sit it cars and videotape license plates) they have been so forthcoming with pithy sound bites through all this, but when I looked for some in the articles of the last week which I still have up in Firefox I didn't see any. Consider the person I heard interviewed on NPR last Thursday (13Apr06) reacting to the marches: "they're illegals, they're all criminals, like any other criminal - arrest them now!" What is the source, reason, logic of this anger I thought as I listened to this. Where does it come from? There was also opinion from the always reliable Michelle Malkin to the hundred thousands who marched in dozens of American cities - the second set of rallies when djs and other advocates were counseling the demonstrators to bring American flags. I saw this via Tailrank (which I have been relying on in Blogdexes absence) [Tailrank similar to technorati and blogdex puts up a snippet of a web source generating attention on a given day (garnering links) along with a thumbnail and snippets from commentators]. "Communist Agitators" she was railing, and their fiendish tricks: American flags waved proudly, how obvious. A falling back to old and familiar categories of right-wing reaction. Unhinged indeed. Behind all these hard views was some remarkable soft data This brings us into the realm of the Yankee Dollar. A CS Monitor article stated economists do not have data to predict what would happen if foreign workers were removed from the labor market
Immigration debate crux: jobs impact | csmonitor.com. Would native unemployed take these jobs -- at the same wage rate? Nor does anyone seem to have a grasp of the final number of undocumented workers 11 or 12 million - or how many of them, with families and children, would desire to stay a citizens.
Deal Would Put Millions on Path to Citizenship - New York Times, and similarly
For illegal migrants, time in US may define status | csmonitor.com. There is one set of facts that is fairly solid: Annual Mexican Gross Domestic Product per capita is just under $7,000. It is almost $44,000 in the United States.
Immigration debate seen skirting root cause. Those numbers again: Ranking 5th United States $41,400; and 69th Mexico $6,770 (
Data - Quick Reference Tables : GNI per capita 2004, Atlas method and PPP,
The World Bank.)
What is real here? What is the most real, or at least more real. Borders? "[T]he proposed 700-mile, $2.2 billion barrier" -- "a major point of contention - not just for the US and Mexico, but for the US and the whole region"
Latin leaders balk at US 'wall' | csmonitor.com. This maginot line against the poor and inconvenient will cost more than that by the time it's built - in dollars - in human lives. And it will never at any point be more than irrelevant:
South of the border, fence is no deterrent | csmonitor.com. Politics then? The Minuteman 'movement' to (re)define a weak agenda, these conservatives didn't approve. The Presidents instincts to set up a guest worker program was not objectionable, but it may have lacked policy rigor. Unfortunate opportunistic attempt to latch on to this as a wedge issue was ill advised and incompetent, it misses it's point because it doesn't seek to understand. Amid these competing and incongruent aims
GOP Chiefs Don't Want Immigrants Charged - Yahoo! News [note dateline carefully] political solutions collapse
Effort to Pass Immigration Bill Collapses in Senate - New York Times. And those who kicked it all off, start fleeing the consequences Immigrant Bill Fallout May Hurt House GOP. Jobs, livelihoods, family security, hope for the future. This in the end, is all that matters to those involved. This was the meaning of the marches
US immigrants mobilizing for major 'action' | csmonitor.com. The urgency to be heard and understood. I am aware that all nations need to control citizenship - at the least in it's concept. I also know it can never be completely controlled by policy or even fully rationalized. I also believe that the United States cannot be the country we say we are if shifting standards on our social compact are employed. The salient point is we all (or our fore-bearers) came here and came to the property we hold here from elsewhere, and within the modern documented era
American Pioneers -- or 'Illegals'. We can build a wall if we like, but justice will not supply us with anything we can hide behind.
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